Joshua B. Hoe interviews Keri Blakinger about her book “Corrections in Ink.”
Full Episode
My Guest – Keri Blakinger
Keri Blakinger is an investigative Reporter based in Texas. She covers criminal justice and injustice for the Marshall Project and writes “Inside Out” a regular column published in collaboration with NBC News. She was a member of the Houston Chronicle’s Pulitzer finalist team in 2018 and her 2019 coverage of women’s jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped earn a National Magazine Award. Keri is also the author of the new book “Corrections In Ink.”
Watch the Interview on YouTube
You can watch Episode 131 of the Decarceration Nation Podcast on our YouTube channel.
Notes from Episode 131 Keri Blakinger – Corrections in Ink
The book Keri recommended has not been published yet.
You can purchase a copy of Corrections in Ink for a person in prison using this link.
Purchase your own copy of Corrections in Ink.
Full Transcript
Joshua Hoe
Hello and welcome to Episode 131 of the Decarceration Nation podcast, a podcast about radically reimagining America’s criminal justice system.
I’m Josh Hoe, and among other things, I’m formerly incarcerated; a freelance writer; a criminal justice reform advocate; a policy analyst; and the author of the book Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction and Living Hope.
Today’s episode is my interview with Keri Blakinger about her book Corrections In Ink. Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter based in Texas. She covers criminal justice and injustice for the Marshall Project and writes Inside Out, a regular column published in collaboration with NBC News. She was a member of the Houston Chronicles Pulitzer finalist team in 2018 and her 2019 coverage of
Thanks for having me. women’s jails for The Washington Post magazine helped earn a National Magazine Award. Keri is also the author of the new book Corrections in Ink, which we’ll be discussing here today. Welcome to the DecarcerationNation podcast Keri Blakinger.
Josh Hoe
Oh, my pleasure. I’ve been planning to do this for a long time. I’m glad we finally had more than the usual good reason.
I always ask the same first question, which is normally how you get from wherever you started in life to where you were doing what you’re doing now. But since we’re talking about your book, and that’s kind of what the whole book is about, I think I’ll just ask you a different question now. We’ll cover the rest of it later. So I’ll just ask something that wasn’t included in your memoir. Now that you’re past all that stuff, what do you do for fun now? I seem to remember reading something about swords.
Keri Blakinger
Um, well, I run a lot. And I do crosswords a little bit obsessively. Just like I did in prison.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, both of us did crosswords in prison too. I’d forgotten about that.
Keri Blakinger
And the swords thing was just that people kept giving me sharp weapons. And it just sort of became a going joke. So like I have a sword that one of my colleagues gave me. We said if somebody donated to the Marshall Project and said – I forget we had them they needed to say one specific thing with their donation – that she would buy me a sword and she did and it says something in Latin about like sees the records because you know, I do a lot of open records requests. But then I also have, somebody gave me a … mace which is like a very solid club-like object that really feels like you could beat the shit out of somebody with it. And you know, as a felon, I obviously can’t, you know, carry a gun like everyone else in Texas. But I do keep a Maasai mace in my car. I also had like a retractable staff at one point but that wasn’t really like a good weapon per se. And I have a few shanks. I think those are legal so I have them.
Josh Hoe
I tried to give you a loophole there…
Keri Blakinger
Definitely looked it up. I definitely look things up before I acquire any weaponry, no matter how small because, you know, because I mean, I live in Texas, as previously indicated, and Texas until recently had, like, the Little Kitty keychains were very famously illegal here, the kind that are like, you put them on your, they’re kind of like on your knuckles, but they have like a little sort of built-in knife type thing. Not like a knife. It’s like a sharp, you know what I mean? It’s not really a knife, but it’s just a sharp thing that women would tend to carry, like, they’re shaped like a little cat. You know, it’s clearly marketed towards women and women would tend to carry them and those were illegal until I think like the 2019 legislative session. It was kind of wild, given how gun-friendly Texas is. But yet, you couldn’t own the little Kitty.
Josh Hoe
And speaking of laws and women, you’re the first person I’ve interviewed since the wave of regressive Supreme Court decisions last week. So I should probably ask you to share your thoughts on the current state of things here in lovely America.
Keri Blakinger
You know, I kept thinking that, I keep thinking about people in prison, that’s obviously where my mind goes. And I keep thinking that so many people, not the listeners of this podcast, but so many people that don’t immerse themselves in criminal justice stuff regularly, have really no concept of how little health care there is in women’s prison. I mean, in prison generally, but specifically, women’s specific care, is often worse than just the sort of average medical shittiness in prisons, and so it seems like such a sad irony to be punishing women for their health care decisions by putting them in a place where they can’t get that kind of help, where they can’t get health care period. When I was locked up, I had my period for like six months at one point, and, you know, on the outside, they would just give you birth control or something to regulate it. It’s not expensive like it’s not hard. And, you know, that was in jail. That was before we got to prison. And they initially gave me some and then said, no, no, sorry, we don’t give anyone birth control, we shouldn’t have done that. Just bleed, too bad. And so blood for six straight months, which, I don’t really think I need to explain why that’s really shitty. And you know, you’re getting strip-searched all the time. Like, there’s a lot of reasons that’s extra shitty when you’re locked up. And you don’t have access to decent feminine hygiene products. And you know, to me, it’s just one sort of low-level baseline indicator as to how badly jails and prisons can take care of women and women’s health issues. And to have it be that now more people are going to end up in jails and prisons, for seeking health care. And they’re going to be sent to a place where they’re just not even getting a bare minimum of health care. It just seems so unfair. And it just seems like such a sad irony. And I feel like I’m sort of still thinking through a better way to explain those connections to people. But those have been some of my initial thoughts on it.
Josh Hoe
Before we get to the book, I remember several years ago, we had kind of a back and forth about the kind of language people use to describe incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. We follow each other on Twitter. And I noticed today you were talking about one of the terms that traditionally has been considered offensive: the term offender, which I agree with is a term that is anything but helpful. In fact, in an ironic twist here in Michigan, our reentry program that the state runs is called, believe it or not, Offender Success, which is about as oxymoronic as it gets. So where are you on language usage these days? Because I feel like maybe there’s a little change, maybe not.
Keri Blakinger
No, there isn’t any change. I just never liked “offender.” I think that offender sounds, I’ve never liked offender, or convict or criminal or ex-con. If you’re someone else who did time and you’re calling me convict, I know you mean it as a compliment. That’s fine. Like that’s language that we can use as an in-group. But whenever someone else uses it, it is 99% of the time intended as an insult. And if you are in that small fraction, who doesn’t mean it as an insult, like, just read the room? No, that’s how it’s probably going to be received. Because that’s usually how it’s used, you know? So I don’t like, I don’t like ex-con or convict or criminal for all those reasons. “Offender,” I just don’t like because it sounds so close to saying that someone is just an offensive person like I’m inherently an offense.
Josh Hoe
I kind of feel like that’s true with almost all the language. So what I said to you, I think at the time, it’s been my rule forever, which is, if someone who’s been formerly incarcerated calls themselves something, I have no problem with that; you can call yourself whatever you want. It’s when people on the outside call us things that tend to bother me. I don’t know,
Keri Blakinger
I think our conversation was around “prisoner” and “inmate.”
Josh Hoe
I think it was felon, but I could be wrong.
Keri Blakinger
I don’t tend to call people felons, because I feel that I can really call myself that, but I feel like that can be a kind of grating word to use. But, um, you know, but then there’s some situations where if you’re describing, you know, felony voting, like it is difficult to write an article without saying that because when you’re writing an article, the considerations around language are a little bit different than how I can consider language in conversation. I don’t have a word count in conversation. I don’t have to worry about character limits in conversation. And the other really important thing that I think it’s really easy to miss if you’re not living in the South, is that I think a lot about how language will be received by the readers here who need to receive it the most. So people in the center and a little to the right, I don’t want them to put down my story because they thought I was using woke language. So I can get around it. And I can often say people in prison or prisoners; I do use prisoners a lot. But I recognize that when I say incarcerated people, that definitely will turn people off to the really important things they need to read in the story.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I guess there’s the old thing with what Riot Grrrl was doing a long time ago, which is [they] kind of tried to own the language of the oppressor and change it and stuff like that. And I get that, you know. But it’s weird because I think in most cases, I agree philosophically, with a lot of the ideas that I think people on the right would call woke. But I also agree that it’s a problem that they can tune out anything that they think is using language that they would consider to be problematic. Is your thought that you’re going to break that down somehow, or change that by getting them hooked? How do we get to the point where change comes from that, I guess, either way?
Keri Blakinger
Well, I mean, I think that . . .
Josh Hoe
Not that you have to have the answer to that; it’s a big question.
Keri Blakinger
Well, I do think that in Texas, I can, I can see it, you know; I’ve written articles that lawmakers have read and, you know, changed policies. So, I mean, I haven’t asked individual lawmakers, would you still follow my work if you saw it as using the sort of language that you view as an activist? But I do have a sense of how things work in Texas. And I do think that there are audiences that would not pay attention to certain language choices, and you see in the comment section sometimes, or, you know, people will respond to that and call out that In particular. More commonly it would happen in emails, like, reader emails, you know. I mean, obviously, I’m not going to use offensive terms. I’m also going to try to use terms that aren’t going to turn off readers and that don’t distract from the reading. Because this is the other thing, is that sometimes, I have to be aware that some of my readers are not going to even be familiar with the usage of some of these terms. If I say, you know, I mean, some conversations around reentry, I don’t think necessarily everybody knows what reentry means, or a returning citizen. That’s a term that I think some people who are not involved and are not paying attention to the justice space, just sort of general readers in this area, at least in you know, in Texas, might not intuitively understand. So those are some of the things I think I take into consideration. But the other thing is, I know that some of these shifts have been about people-first language to try to emphasize humanizing people. And it’s always been my thought that as a reporter, who covers these in a sort of careful, nuanced way, if I am not humanizing people, in the course of the story, if what it requires is if I have to tell you that this person is a person for you to remember that they’re a person like I am fucking failing as a writer,
Josh Hoe
Sure, that makes some sense. So, I think we now will get toward the book stuff. And I think way too little attention is given why people pick their quotes that start their books. So you start the book with a quote from “Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith. Can you talk about how and why you chose that quote?
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, that’s a poem I’ve liked all my life. And I don’t know, it seemed very apt in the many years that I was struggling with mental health problems and addiction and suicidal depression and eating disorders. But it became more specifically germane to the book because I actually ended up referencing it in there because when I was in jail, I would, I would copy out poems from some poetry books that I had gotten sent in, and one which I didn’t even need to copy out because I already had it memorized, was Not Waving But Drowning. And I used toothpaste to stick it up on the metal of the bunk above me, and I read it all the time. And I actually got it. I also, I forgot I had gotten that poem in a book that another woman gave me before she got sent off to rehab and then eventually to prison. And so I still have that book, it was a…I don’t know, a valuable relationship to me because she was someone who had told me to start journaling and ended up being the reason I kept a journal and had the sort of basis to write a book. And in addition to suggesting that I write a journal, she’d given me this poetry book, which had Not Waving But Drowning. And I put that on the bunk above me and read it all the time. And it just seemed like that made it a good fit for the book. That’s called the epigraph, right? I should know because I had to negotiate the rights on it. Like I should absolutely remember what the fuck it’s called.
Josh Hoe
Your book starts out at what had to be one of your lowest moments when you got arrested and first found yourself behind bars. A lot of folks [have] either experienced that same feeling or have a loved one who is arrested. Heck, I remember hearing a knock on my own door and seeing like 12 officers in the hall of my apartment, I guess it was something like 11 years, 12 years ago now. So what would you tell people about that experience? Or what else should people know about that?
Keri Blakinger
Wait, wait, what year did you get arrested?
Josh Hoe
Oh, let’s see. 2010.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, so this was in December 2010.
Josh Hoe
You and me got arrested the same year. And Shaka Senghor and I got out the same year.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, so I started with that. Because given what this book is about, it’s about you know, I mean, a large chunk of it is about my time behind bars and sort of how that shaped me afterwards. And, you know, I think it shaped my career afterwards, [and] I thought that it only made sense to start there. And then after that, I jumped back and forth between sort of backstory and my time in jail, and then eventually in prison. And, you know, I thought that it’s a book about prison, right. And I thought about starting and just going straight through chronologically, but that felt like you would read the first quarter of the book, and have no sense of what the actual point is, or what it’s actually about if I did it that way. And I also sort of wanted to convey, I don’t know, how confusing that start of a journey through the criminal justice system is and how blurry so many of my drug years were. And, also, of course, I wanted to convey like, in those early days after your arrest, you’re definitely thinking back a lot on your life before jail, and how you ended up there. So I thought that starting with the arrest, and then alternating between jail and the sort of flashback memory chapters, made a lot of sense, although I do remember that I think it was my agent, or maybe my editor was like, you want to start with your arrest, really? Are you sure? And I was like, no, no, I’m very sure about this. Like, this is the moment that makes the rest of the book exist.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, it makes sense. So let’s start with some of the before stuff. I have to, just because I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to ask a former competitive skater this, to ask a question about competitive skating. And for anyone who’s listening or watching, and who doesn’t know, Keri was a very successful competitive pair skater. when she was younger. I, like most people, only see skating like every four years or so when the Olympics rolls around. But it seems from the outside like a sport where, after years and even decades of incredibly intense practice. Almost everyone fails. And, you know, even though it’s very, it seems almost unpredictable, in a sense, and maybe that’s why it’s so popular, and the skills seem almost impossible. And expectations seem insane. I mostly just feel sorry for people, you know, except the few times when someone actually hits their program, right. What are your thoughts about competitive skating now? And is any of that any fair? Was I being fair or unfair there? I don’t even know.
Keri Blakinger
I think some of that’s right. I think looking back, one of the things [that] is really wild to me as an adult is that – so one of the big moments in a skater’s career when I was skating, and this is still true to some extent now – is when you get a Double Axel or not, and a double axle is two and a half rotations, all the other double jumps are an even two. But if you get a double axle, you’re probably gonna get your triple jumps afterward. And if you never get a double axle, you’re really not going to go anywhere, you’re probably not going to make the nationals, you’re certainly not going to be an elite competitive skater. I mean, it takes a long time for a lot of people. For me, I started working on it right before Middle School and was content. I didn’t get my Double Axel until the beginning of ninth grade. And the wild part to me is, that means I spent every day for hours because I would be skating for like, two to four hours a day, plus other off-ice training, you know, I would spend most of that time attempting double axles and falling on them literally hundreds of times a day. And as an adult, it’s wild to me to think that I spent three young formative years, just failing repeatedly at the same thing, literally hundreds of times a day. Like there’s really nothing that is sort of equivalent to that as an adult. Like you have things that might take a long time or long-term projects. But there’s almost nothing as an adult that you run into in your career that involves such incremental, repeated failure again, and again, and such clear failure. It’s not like, oh, you know, this is a little better, or, you know, I almost won this motion, or a few judges . . . . So it was like, No, it’s, it’s just like, every few minutes, you’re falling on cold ice. And it just seemed very normal then. But looking back, I’m like, that’s a really weird formative experience. And I can’t really imagine doing that now.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I can’t imagine; it seems like it would also be quite painful and dangerous a lot of the time. I don’t know, maybe I’m a little risk-averse,
Keri Blakinger
You learn how to fall properly. I mean, and it’s actually not, you tend to fall in the same ways. So it’s actually not as bad as it would look. It’s not like you’re doing like a somersault and falling and [you’re] gonna fall on your head; you’re really just going to fall typically on your hips because you’re rotating. I would rotate over my left shoulder. So I would tend to fall, you know, I would tend to fall on my left hip. But yeah, I don’t know, you learn how to fall; that’s not as bad as it looks. Ice burn is really unpleasant, though.
Josh Hoe
That makes sense too. I mean, that just seems like a tough, tough sport. So in your young life, and I’m maybe leaving some things out here, your journey seems to involve the competitive skating, self-destructive streaks and perfectionism, some eating disorders, drug addiction, eventually sex work, and a bunch of other struggles, depression, some other stuff. Now that you’ve landed where you’re landed, and you can reflect, if someone were listening to this, who was kind of struggling with some of that same stuff, would you have any insight into that period of your life?
Keri Blakinger
You know, I get asked this in sort of a lot of different ways. And I think it’s frankly, an unfair question. But I mean, people are expecting that I’m going to have some nugget of knowledge that’s going to help people avoid addiction, or eating disorders or whatever, you know, and I feel like looking back, the thing that sort of stands out is there’s nothing that 38-year-old me could tell 13-year-old me that I would have listened to, you know? I do think that there were formative things in my life that probably pushed me in more self-destructive directions. Like, I think that the lack of sort of normal social interaction as a result of skating probably heightened all those things. You know, I was spending, I think, more time alone and just sort of more isolated than a lot of kids. And I think that makes it easier for depression and eating disorders to really take root because eating disorders are not a group activity; you end up sort of needing a lot of isolation for that to really fester. So I mean, I think there were things that sort of pushed me in a direction that I was clearly prone to going. But I don’t know what sort of big picture thoughts as to how to avoid all that? I don’t know, it’s also so individualized.
Josh Hoe
You know, I definitely understand what you’re saying, I get asked questions like that, too. And I’m not always sure exactly what to answer. Because yeah, you know what happened, what’s true for me, even if I have had insights certainly isn’t necessarily true for everyone else. But I do feel like, you know, at the same time we’ve gone through these things, there’s hopefully something we got. You know,
Keri Blakinger
The one thing I do tell parents a lot, and this is not quite what you’re asking at all, but I have a lot of times that parents will have somebody that is struggling with addiction, and they’re trying to figure out how to navigate this and how to parent when one of their children is dealing with addiction. And I think that traditional recovery programs have often taken the view that any interaction or any financial or material support is enabling. And I just think that’s not true.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I agree. 100%.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, I think it’s a really damaging thing. I think everyone’s boundaries are in a different place. You know, for me, my parents helped pay for college, even when they were pretty sure I was using, but they weren’t quite sure. And I think that made a huge difference. I think that was, you know, I think that was sort of one of the few things that kept me at all grounded and not just being like, fucking I’m gonna move to Colombia, you know?
Josh Hoe
I agree. It’s like if you leave people in the worst possible place, they’re going to do the worst possible things, not better things there, right? You do have to set boundaries, I think everybody has to set boundaries that are right for them. But I think the thing that makes that particular advice so damaging is it convinces people that being cruel to other people is kindness. It just, in my experience, has been incredibly bad advice. Dangerous, you know, bad.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah. And if you cut off support networks, then you know, people aren’t going to have the resources to get help or to get sober. And I mean, it also ends up encouraging people to lie to you more than they already would. I mean, obviously, self-care is important. And you don’t need to put yourself in a position where you’re needlessly harming yourself to support someone who’s in an active addiction. But I just think that this whole idea that any support is enabling is wrong and damaging.
Josh Hoe
Do you have any other thoughts about recovery and 12-Step and stuff like that? I’m kind of famously conflicted about 12-Step. Do you have any thoughts? I know, you went through periods of that as well.
Keri Blakinger
I think that there are people for whom it is great and wonderful, and it works. And I’m not going to knock that for those people. But I think that it is a model based on a thought process that is fundamentally not conducive to women, and vulnerable populations, a lot of vulnerable populations, because, you know, some of the sort of central tenets of it are things like, you know, are about sort of ceding power and control and ego. And this was invented by a bunch of white men in the 40s and 50s, people who had that sort of power and control and ego, and it doesn’t really take into account past trauma; it tends to assume that the person who is in 12 steps was the abuser, was the person generating the trauma. And I just don’t think that that is typically the approach that a lot of women need. And I think this is also true for people of color and other vulnerable populations. Or it can be true that just the model of 12 steps isn’t necessarily conducive to their pasts and their needs. But, I did 12 Steps some, in the beginning, the first time I tried, I say, tried to get sober in air quotes. I wasn’t really trying. I did and I was still a mess. I knew I was still a mess. I don’t think it’s at all the fault of any 12 Step programs that I didn’t stay sober that time. I was not in a place where I was going to and I think I knew that you know? And then after I got arrested, I did go to AA, in jail. And it was a special experience.
Josh Hoe
I’ve done that too.
Keri Blakinger
You know what it was? Just a chance to get out of the cellblock and be around someone who would have some level of respect for us and just be decent to us. And that was nice. And then when I went to prison, I stopped doing the 12 Step programs. I also think that the whole abstinence-only thing has been obviously problematic in a lot of ways. I mean, I, for instance, had struggled with eating disorders for years. Like, I don’t understand; if abstinence-only is the only way to solve addiction, no one would ever get better from eating disorders ever. Because you have to learn moderation. Like that is literally what recovery looks like, with eating disorders. And, you know, when I think that, sure, there’s a lot of people [for whom] maybe abstinence is the only option. Or maybe there are certain things that they can just never touch again. Maybe it’s true that you’re someone who was addicted to heroin and really can’t drink alcohol again. But that’s not everyone. And I think that it can be damaging to act like, if you have ever done heroin, and you have a beer, you have relapsed, you have lost all your clean time. And you know, you’re back at step one.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I’ve seen there’s so many times where I’ve seen, you know, people who were really trying and are just totally devastated by that moment, to the point where, you know, they’re almost, I don’t want to say suicidal, but so depressed, that they can’t even see a path forward, because they worked so hard, they’ve gotten so much sobriety, and then they made the mistake or did the wrong thing or at the wrong time. And it’s almost traumatic. That moment is almost as traumatic as anything else that could have happened. I think in those situations, it’s just, I don’t know, I just, I’ve seen it work for people. And I’ve definitely seen it not work for people. And it can be pretty spectacularly bad when it doesn’t work for people. You also, I think, in one part of the book had at least one drug counselor, who said something pretty terrible to you. I’ve had some terrible experiences with therapists before and after arrest and incarceration, but also had some really good experiences with therapists. Do you have thoughts on therapy after having gone through so much of this stuff?
Keri Blakinger
Actually, I’m not in therapy. Now, people ask me this. I know, that wasn’t your question. But I, I’ve had some therapists over the years that I think were great. And amazing. One of them actually came to see one of my book talks in Lancaster. And after I saw her, I still went on to continue using drugs for years. And, you know, I don’t think that means that she was a failure in any way. I just, you know, wasn’t, I wasn’t there yet. But I also think that therapists have a lot of a lot of power over how you see yourself, how you think of yourself, how you approach the world. And, it’s unfortunate that there’s so many that just were not good at their jobs in the drug addiction treatment world. In fairness, those were mostly counselors, not licensed psychotherapists. But, the idea that just because you survived addiction means you’re somehow inherently qualified to treat it, I think, is not accurate. Like it can be an extra helpful added experience.
Josh Hoe
It’s kind of like a weird example of bootstrapping.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it’s great to know that your counselor has been through some of the same things. And that can be a great bond, a great sort of starting point, in terms of trusting someone. But that’s not enough, like that doesn’t confer some higher knowledge that in and of itself, makes them qualified, uniquely qualified, without any additional information or training or whatever. And, as you alluded to, I had one counselor that made a comment that if I, you know, had been raped more than once that it was my fault. And it’s kind of wild to me to look back on that and, and think that – and this is a woman – that she would think it was a good idea to say that to, I think I was 17 at the time, might have been 18, to a 17-18-year-old. But you know, I’m sure she wasn’t a bad person. I think that part of that is the sort of tough love approach to treatment. And this whole 12 Step idea of taking responsibility, I just don’t think that your own rape is something you should ever be telling someone to take responsibility for.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I agree with you there. And you had some incredibly horrific experiences during that period with sex work and drug addiction. We are, or at least we were, it’s kind of hard to know because we’ve got this kind of new tough-on-crime wave going right now. But we were finally seeing some change around, at least with some prosecutors, around the criminalization of sex work. Do you have thoughts about having experienced some of this? Where we are, where we should be, what could happen or should happen? Again, not looking at you as a savior, just you have more experience in this than perhaps some of the people I would talk to about this.
Keri Blakinger
I mean, I think there are a lot of things. When it is criminalized, it adds danger. You know, that means that the people involved in that work, are having to go through backchannels and being shady or [in] places, I have to imagine that I probably wouldn’t have needed to be walking in, around the streets of Chinatown at 2 am, if it were legal. And I also think that the subcultures that grow up around activities, when they are illegal, can be really dangerous in very specific ways. I think that street sex work has a different set of rules and culture than escorting for instance or working in a strip club. Like there’s a lot of overlap. But I definitely ended up in a lot more situations that felt quite unsafe when I was doing street sex work. And I think that part of that is because of the nature of how the market works when it is not legal.
Josh Hoe
Well, now I guess it’s time to turn to the incarceration part of the book. One thing I think I should ask first, because, you know, obviously, well, I’ve experienced incarceration, I’ve not experienced incarceration in women’s prisons and jails. I think we too often assume incarceration is kind of a generic system with a generic incarcerated person, which usually ends up being a man; do you want to talk about some of that? You’ve talked about some of them already. But some of the unique problems with women’s prisons and jails, including overcrowding and anything else you want to add in before we talk more specifically about things you mention more directly in the book.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, I think that women’s prisons are bad in such different ways, from the ways that men’s prisons typically are. And I think that there are ways that are in some way that feel a little bit harder to objectively quantify. For instance, in men’s prisons, there’s a lot more violence in fights, you know, and people are more likely to get beat by the guards. Like, I didn’t see a ton of that; it did happen occasionally. But I did not see a ton of people getting beaten by guards. People don’t tend to hit women as easily as they will men. I mean, male officers don’t tend to hit women as quickly or easily as they would men. And I think that violence is a very objective, easy thing to look at and say this prison is bad. Like that is clearly a bad thing. But you know, there’s some head games and humiliation and I think those kinds of things seem to be more pronounced in women’s prison. And I think that that is a different kind of psychological torture that exists in men’s prisons also, but I think is more pronounced in women’s and it’s more subjective. So I think it’s a little more difficult for people to see or understand these distinctions. You know, I think one of the sort of most clear examples of this would be strip searches when you’re on your period, like, they would make you take out your tampon. And I was in New York. So I think New York prisons are generally less bad than the prisons I write about now, which are predominantly in the South.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, the South is uniquely terrible.
Keri Blakinger
It is so humiliating to have to, you know, take out a bloody tampon during a strip search, and so unnecessary, because, honestly, if I had contraband stuffed up in there, like, I don’t need the tampon to keep it in, it’s not like some vaginal cap, you know, I don’t understand, if they don’t know how female anatomy works, that you think you need to make the person take out a bloody tampon. I mean, even if I did have drugs in there, how was I going to get them behind the tampon, none of it makes sense. But in Texas, one of my friends who did a lot of time in Texas was telling me how they would get strip-searched every day when they go out when they called, you know, what they called the whole squad, will go out to work in the fields, and you would have to strip in front of the whole squad. So that’s, you know, half a dozen, a dozen, up to 30 women. And you know, if you’re on your period, you’d have to take out the tampon in front of all of them, and hold it up for the guard to inspect, and like that is so unnecessary. That’s not stopping contraband, that’s just humiliation for the sake of it. And I think that’s a very clear example. But I think that there’s sort of a lot of examples of ways in which women’s prisons rely more on shame and humiliation to keep people in line and men’s prisons rely more on violence. And, you know, those are both bad in different ways. And we understand that violence is a lot easier to see and quantify. And I think that some of the ways that women are treated can be damaging long term in very different ways. And of course, there’s also always the overarching threat of you know, sexual abuse, because so many of these prisons have sex abuse scandals. And that’s obviously a whole other, you know, threat that works differently in women’s prisons than in men’s. I know, that is obviously a thing in men’s prison. But again, it’s different, because it’s not typically the guards raping inmates.
Josh Hoe
Another thing that I know, I struggle with, at times, we are both well-educated, formerly incarcerated white folks who are somewhat publicly known. You probably more than me. But it’s a little weird at times because a lot of times I’ll even say this, that, you know, predominantly, the experience of incarceration is not… I mean, there are plenty of white folks in prison, but the story of mass incarceration to me, I think I said it on the very first episode of the podcast, that you’d have to be willfully blind to walk into a jail or prison in the United States and not see the racial disparities. Can you talk about what you talk about in the book? Can you talk a little bit about privilege, race, and incarceration?
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, sure. Like you said, this is a thing I talked about in the book, and I’ve talked about it before the book. I think a lot about how people, I think it’s really easy for people to overlook the role of white privilege on a sort of individual basis. When you look at a given anecdote, and you say, Well, I can’t say for sure that the judge, in this case, was considering race, or there’s really no comparable case, so I can’t really say when a black person with the same amount of drugs has gotten the same sentence. And I think that’s one of the reasons that it’s easy for some people to choose to not acknowledge the role of race and white privilege in criminal justice outcomes. But when you step back and look at the big picture and sort of realize that every point along the way adds up, I think, then it’s easier to see that even if you can’t definitively say this would have been different if I were black, you can say in the aggregate, there’s all these different points at which things could have gone differently. And data shows at some point they probably would have. So for instance, with my sentence, I can’t say for sure that the judge would have sentenced a black person differently. It’s actually really hard to say that in my case because there are no comparable arrests in that county in that timeframe with that sort of politics going on. And people would point that out to me and they’d be like, yeah, But you really don’t know. And this was actually a kind of harsh sentence for that very progressive County, for someone with a first-time offense. And you know, that’s all true. But I still quite reasonably think that if I were a person of color, I probably would have ended up with a longer sentence for a number of reasons. One of which is that you know, I’d had, I’d been using drugs for 9-10, nine years at that point. And I can think of so many interactions that I had with police, in which I was very clearly doing something quite suspicious. And they chose to walk away or to ignore it. And, you know, I know that if I were someone with black or brown skin, someone who was more likely to just be viewed as suspicious by police, many of those interactions could have gone differently. And that would have meant that I would have had a criminal record by the time I did get arrested in 2010. So even if that judge had somehow miraculously not been influenced by race at all, I still would have gotten a much longer sentence, because I would have had more priors and I would have qualified for a harsher sentence, even though I would have been doing the same things. So, you know, I think that that’s part of why it’s really easy for people to choose to overlook the role of race, because you can always sort of pinpoint a very specific decision and say, well, but you don’t know. And, you know, maybe you don’t in the individual instances, but you know, you can look at the data in the aggregate, and understand that there’s all these other factors that could have, there’s all these other inflection points in which things could have gone differently,
Josh Hoe
We could probably talk about a million of the particular things that we both experienced [about] incarceration together, [even if] in different places, but that were similar. But one thing I thought was a really interesting turn of phrase, you said, in a sense that being incarcerated was like being erased. And I thought that there was a lot of truth to that. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Keri Blakinger
I thought about this, when well, I thought about this in a few different contexts, but it felt especially clear when I got out. And, you know, there’s, I don’t know if you notice this, but like, when I first got out, it felt like everybody looked at me in a certain way, they knew what I’d been in for. So it wasn’t like, this was like, some surprise, but they don’t trust that you’re going to stay out. You know, they look at you in some way, you can see it in their eyes, that they think you’re just sort of there temporarily. And then you’re gonna get violated and you’re gonna go back to prison. Even people that say they believe in you. And I don’t know, that sort of felt like I was less of a person. But, you know, that’s partly because I had been erased for two years at that point, you know, all of these relationships that existed through snail mail, like, not in person, not necessarily even a voice, like so many of the people that I would see on the outside, or people that I hadn’t kept in touch with by phone, during the time I was in. And aside from being sort of erased from their lives, it’s also this big gap for me, there’s still 10 years later, there’s times I’ll hear a song and I’ll be Oh, that’s a cool new song. Nah, that shit’s 10 years old, it just came out during the two years I missed, you know? And it’s like this hole in your cultural awareness.
Josh Hoe
So, you know, I try not to spend too much time talking about, you know, redescribing the trauma and all that kind of thing. And every once in a while, I think one of the things that’s really interesting about your book, if you read it a particular way, one of the things you really get out of it is how much community there is from the people who are incarcerated together. And there’s a couple of things in the book that I thought were really great examples of that. You mentioned a bunch of people all of a sudden, spontaneously breaking out singing Kelly Clarkson. And you said this was not just women singing, this was women learning how to steal joy in a place built to prevent it, which I thought was an incredibly well-written phrase. The other one is you talked about communally created meals. You know, on the one side in prison, you have this terrible food. On the other side, you have commissary, and people kind of in a stone soup kind of way get together a lot of times and make cook ups together. And those are actually pretty, pretty amazing. Do you find that you think of prison as a terrible place, but remember a lot of the community that was created there? Or do you just think of it as a terrible thing? How do you remember it?
Keri Blakinger
I mean, yes, I obviously think of prison as a terrible thing. Yeah. But I also, I keep in touch with a lot of those women, I keep in touch with, I think, probably a larger percentage of people from that period of my life than a lot of others. And it’s interesting now, when I’m interacting with them, or when I see someone in person or talk to them after I haven’t talked to them in years, it’s interesting how much we pick up where we left off, sort of, like there aren’t the same, our lives have changed. But it’s not like the same sort of gaps and disconnections that I sometimes feel if I’m talking to someone from high school, or college or something. And I think that sort of no matter how much we change, and grow and move in different directions, like prison is a uniquely traumatic experience, and the bonds that you form from surviving that together are a very distinct kind of bond.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. So do any of them still call you Harry Potter? No, I’m just kidding.
Keri Blakinger
So there was somebody it wasn’t that long ago, that one of my friends from prison that I talked to was talking to someone else who kind of knew me, but like, we weren’t close, and was like, saying that I’d written a book and they were like, Keri, who’s that? She’s like, Harry Potter. So yes, that is still how some people remember me.
Josh Hoe
Just weird, because I agree, I don’t think you look particularly like Harry Potter. But I guess you know, at a moment in time,
Keri Blakinger
I think I looked more like Harry Potter in prison. Because I had a little bit rounder glasses. I didn’t have half my head shaved. It was all, you know, the same length. And you know, it was not a very good haircut. I mean, it probably looked like Harry Potter hair. And I didn’t have the tattoos. I obviously wasn’t wearing piercings in prison. And in New York prisons, we wore collared shirts. So I think sort of all of that together. Also, I know at the time, my brother kind of did look like Daniel Radcliffe. So I didn’t see it in myself. But I can accept that it was probably there a little bit.
Josh Hoe
I have to ask this question because I’ve never come across this before. And it’s got to at least, that you almost had to have multiple consciousness at several times during this period of your life. And I’m sure it’s happened before, but you ended up living with one of your former correctional officers after incarceration. I don’t even know how to ask a good question about this. But it seems like that had to have been interesting, at the very least; is there anything you would say about that, having been an incarcerated person trying to have a regular relationship with someone who’s a correctional officer?
Keri Blakinger
I mean, you know, obviously, we broke up, so I think that says a lot.
Josh Hoe
Sure. It just seems so improbable in the first place.
Keri Blakinger
I don’t think it was a good decision. And, you know, in retrospect, I don’t think it was a good decision for either of us. I think that the relationship starting off with that kind of power differential makes it really hard to transition to a relationship where you’re on more equal footing. And I think that was difficult. I mean, there were other problems. And you know, there were other issues. But, I mean, out of the bad decisions I could have made in early sobriety like that is surely not the worst decision I could have made. So I mean, I’m not like beating myself up about it, but I don’t think that was a good decision for either of us. And, you know, I don’t think he’s a bad person, though.
Josh Hoe
I mean, it’s tough because I definitely, there were definitely correctional officers that I even to some extent, had respect for. There were just a lot of you know, it’s a very tough thing to negotiate. I’m impressed that you were able to do it.
Keri Blakinger
So I think women are generally conditioned to valuing male attention, right. And, you know, you’re sort of taught that this is a thing you want. I mean, obviously, nobody wants to be catcalled, and that sort of thing. But generally, as a kid, like from, you know, just society teaches you to value attention from men. And I think that in a very vulnerable place in early sobriety when I had just been arrested, I was particularly interested in anyone who seemed to think I had any value at all. And, you know, who would pay me any sort of positive attention. So I think I was in a place where I was sort of not going to enter into a relationship for the right reasons. And it did not seem to me like that then, it should have been obvious. I knew I was in a vulnerable place. And I was like, No, that’s not the reason I’m doing this at all. And I was very convinced of that. But I think looking back that after that relationship, I mean, a few years after that relationship, you know, I had always identified as bisexual. And I now identify as gay because I realized, once I got out and became a reporter, who was doing work that you know, that I find deeply meaningful. And I started to be convinced of my own inherent value because I realized that I could do things that were valuable, I actually realized that I think I’d been engaging in relationships with men for the wrong reasons. Like I don’t think I was actually ever attracted to men, I think I was attracted to what I’ve been taught to value, you know, male attention. And I think that was part of how I ended up in that relationship in the first place. But I don’t know, maybe I’m just saying something that sounds really insightful. Maybe in five years, I’ll be like, nope, totally was wrong about that.
Josh Hoe
Speaking of really impressive things you’ve done, one of my favorite stories is what you did to help people get teeth in Texas. Can you talk a little bit about that? For people who haven’t heard that story?
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, sure. So when I was at the Houston Chronicle, in I guess, 2017-2018, I started covering prisons. And this was, you know, a few years after I got out. I got out in 2012, and then became a reporter, and eventually moved to Texas. And I was at the Houston Chronicle and got a tip that Texas prisoners, that men on death row, were going to get dentures. And I was like, wait, what? they don’t get teeth? Because in New York, if you didn’t have teeth, you would get dentures. And it didn’t occur to me that it would be different, that other states
would just deny someone an entire body part. And I called the prison spokesman the next day, and I was like, Hey, is it true? They’re all getting dentures? And he was like, No, where’d you get that? that’s not happening. So then I started investigating, and after 11 months of you know, trying to report out the story and putting in a records request to get like data and policies and trying to track down the people that I needed to be the face of the story, like the people who had not been able to get teeth, and interviewing them and getting their grievances and letters. Eventually, I finally wrote a story saying, hey, the Texas prison system, instead of giving people teeth, they will take a meal tray, put it in a blender, puree it, pour it in a cup, and give it to you as a blended diet, which they said was a better alternative to the chewing and mastication process. And after I wrote that story, there was one particular Texas state lawmaker who was really irked by it, and he pushed the prison system to do something about it. And so they bought a 3D printer and started 3D printing dentures. I’ve followed up on this, and there are still a lot of people who need teeth and don’t get them because their criteria are not nearly as broad as one would hope. But there are several hundred people who have gotten teeth that would not otherwise have them. So,that’s the sort of amazing impact that I think you dream of as a journalist. And, you know, I didn’t even think that was a possibility. When I wrote that story, I figured I was just writing a story about yet another fucking terrible thing I see in prisons.
Josh Hoe
And that’s an interesting thing; you’ve been writing for years about Texas prisons. One of the worst, probably seven or eight prison systems in the country. And what’s even worse is you’re in a state that only has a legislative session, I think, every other year, a year for a very short period of time.
Keri Blakinger
I mean, the joke is that if it were more frequent, they’d just fuck up more.
Josh Hoe
But it’s very hard to get anything done in an abbreviated session. Because legislation generally takes time. How do you keep from becoming entirely cynical in a state that seems to thrive on that kind of cynicism?
Keri Blakinger
I am, I think, a pretty cynical person.
Josh Hoe
But you’re still writing stories.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, and, I mean, there are things that change. I mean, I think Texas has changed a lot. It’s depressing when you look at the things that haven’t changed, and the things that get worse. But, when you look at what Texas prisons looked like, 40 years ago, things are clearly in a better place. You know, some of it’s the result of class-action lawsuits that have completely remade the face of the prison system over the past four or five decades. And then some of it is investigative reporting, and some of it is legislative change, although I think that often doesn’t change the conditions, that’s more about sort of the front end and the back end, like, legislators don’t tend to touch the conditions themselves quite as much. But you know, the other big thing is, I mean, because of the pandemic, the population is down by, like 25,000. And we didn’t rebound in population like some other states did.
Josh Hoe
A lot of places were not accepting people from jail. And so once the emergency ended, they all of a sudden had a ton more people, because everyone had just been held in county jail. So that’s not happening in Texas?
Keri Blakinger
So that did happen, but somehow never spiked the population again, like it was true that people were held in county jail, and were not being sent along to prison. But when they started catching that up, it didn’t create a population spike. Before the pandemic, there were around 145,000 prisoners in Texas, and now it’s a little under 120,000. And it’s enough later that we would expect to see that some of those numbers have gone back up. But they haven’t. I think part of that is because of backlogs in the courts. So there are some people that you know, probably have pending cases from pre-pandemic, I would imagine. But you know, some of those, the longer those cases go on, I think, the less likely it is that people end up in prison.
Josh Hoe
We both worked pretty hard to raise consciousness about COVID in prisons and jails. You say in the book, the first year of the pandemic taught me more about the casual cruelty of prisons than the 10 years before it had. My friend Amanda Alexander always talks about the power of dreaming big, and of having freedom dreams. So this season, I’ve been asking people what dreams they have about changing our system or eliminating our system. Do you have a vision for the future? Or what you hope we or you will accomplish?
Keri Blakinger
I do not. And, I mean, I don’t because, you know, I live in the south. And I feel like the things that people dream about, the things that so many of the advocates and activists that I know dream about, are so far from reality here. And I think many of them are very far from reality elsewhere, but they might feel closer. And I feel like, you know, when we have conversations about, for instance, abolition, that doesn’t feel like a helpful framework for my work here, because we’re not going to abolish prisons in Texas. You know, that’s not going to happen. And in the meantime, there’s a lot of people in those prisons that are suffering. And, you know, I think, folks that take a sort of abolition only approach and that, you know, any investment in the system is a step away from abolition, do so at the risk of harming the people who are currently there. And that feels particularly true in the south. So, I don’t have a dream of a world where, you know, there are no prisons, because I don’t think about that, in Texas. I instead just try to focus on, you know, pushing on the soft spots and telling stories that have impact on the people that are in there now, in the ways that I can have impact.
Josh Hoe
So I go back and forth on this a lot. I obviously spend a lot of my time doing legislative work. But I also think that you know, there’s kind of two stories of politics, there’s the story that politics is the art of the possible and it’s a realist world, kind of what you were just describing, in a way, but then there’s also the Overton Window story of politics, which is, every once in a while, something spectacular happens. I don’t mean necessarily abolition of prisons. But, you know, the right people, the right message at the right time can create certain, have in the past moments created, fairly substantial change; are you saying you have no interest? And you’re just looking at what can be done today . . .?
Keri Blakinger
Here’s the thing, I’m also not an advocate. I can’t be, I’m a reporter, I wouldn’t be employable if I were out here being an activist. And I mean, so I don’t like it’s just not fruitful for me to sit around envisioning these things that I can’t talk about, or write about. What I can do is hold the system accountable for where it’s fucking up. And in doing so that work can have impact. But I mean, I can’t really go too far down this road talking about abolition, because again,you know, you can’t, I mean, this is a sort of old-school belief about what journalistic objectivity looks like. But, you know, you can’t sit here and talk about it as a journalist, you can’t, you know, sit down and talk about sort of reimagining the whole system or burning it all down. I do own a – am I wearing it now? I’m not, but I do own a burn it all down shirt.
Josh Hoe
This is very interesting to me because if there’s anyone I thought might be a burn it down person, it would be you, I don’t know.
Keri Blakinger
No, I mean, I’m not though. Partly because, you know, I can’t really, it’s not fruitful for me to sort of engage with what world I would imagine when I can’t actually talk about that. Because in the work that I do, if I want to continue doing the work that I do, and having impact in the ways that I have, that means that there are some things I have to not be out there with my opinions on.
Josh Hoe
And does that mean you can’t have a personal political life? I’m just curious because I’ve heard it’s, I’ve never, I guess really talked to someone who does journalism, and in a way that I mean, everyone talks about, you hear people talk about the old school game, but you don’t really hear, you know, this.
Keri Blakinger
It varies and it’s changing. So like, there are some people I know who will not vote in primaries because that would show political opinions or bias. I think that’s a little bit extra. You know, I don’t have a problem with voting in primaries. But, you know, where people draw the line is certainly not where it used to be. I think that some of the things I’m saying now would not have been acceptable 10 years ago. Even just sort of basic things, like saying that, you know, prisoners should have teeth or should be treated like humans, you know, I think that would have been too opinionated at some point. But, you know, generally, the idea is that you shouldn’t have opinions on the things you’re writing about. So like, if you’re covering prisons, you know, a lot of mainstream journalism is the sort of old school belief that you can’t have sort of big picture opinions about things like abolition. Now. There are outlets like Truthout and The Appeal that don’t care if their reporters have those views. But I think that for the mainstream outlets that have the biggest audiences and the best chances for having an impact because you do need to write for an outlet that has a bigger audience to have the best chance of impact because that’s how you shame these prisons into changing is by, you know, by holding them accountable to a large audience. And to keep doing that, you know, the trade-off is that you have to not have certain kinds of opinions. Now, in terms of like, can you have a personal political life, sure, I’m a human, I have opinions, I have beliefs. But the idea is that you just can’t be stating them publicly, or else people will think you’re not objective. I think that’s a ridiculous belief because everyone should know you have opinions, you’re human. I think it’s actually better transparency if you’re open about what those opinions are.
Josh Hoe
So I’m openly skeptical about the idea that anyone can be objective anyway, I guess postmodernism has bled into me enough to believe that.
Keri Blakinger
I agree. I think it’s more transparent to say what your opinions are. But that’s not what journalism is right now. And if I want to continue doing this work, then yes, it means that there are certain things that I can’t be out about opinions on, which also means that I don’t spend a lot of time dreaming about what a different system should be.
Josh Hoe
You know, let me ask you a journalism question, as we’re kind of transitioning toward the end here. I think for a lot of us in the advocacy and, and other kinds of spaces doing this kind of work, we get very frustrated with mainstream journalism because you know, obviously, yourself and some other folks are exceptions. But a lot of it seems to come from a very carceral point of view, a lot of it only seems to be police and prosecutors, a lot of it never seems to ask for data to check any of the facts of the, you know, the claims that those people are making. And it’s very frustrating. Because like you’re saying, so few people who have any knowledge beyond that, have access to those large microphones; is what you’re doing the way to change that? Or, you know, is there a critique of journalism? Is there a way to approach journalism as journalism that might change that?
Keri Blakinger
Well, I think, first of all, it is changing. I think if you look at what is considered best practices now versus 10 years ago, you do see improvement. And I think that, yes, people having journalists that have contact with the system, is one way that changes, kind of one way in which the system fucks itself. Like, if you are big enough that everyone is connected to it, then it becomes personal and more people will understand what was wrong with the ways that the system has been covered in the past. But, I’m still struck by how far we have to go. I think you probably saw these tweets. But, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was on a show where they called me a prostitute in the Chiron.
Josh Hoe
I did see those tweets.
Keri Blakinger
And you know, I’ve had outlets that I respect call me a convict and I get that they weren’t trying to be disrespectful. But, you know, like I said before, like, that does seem like a word that’s pretty clearly almost always used as an insult. And I just don’t understand why you would choose to use a word that is nearly always used as an insult. And, you know, there’s also, we talk a lot in journalism, about how just writing about the initial arrest and never following through to see what happens is not a good practice. It’s something that we’ve all agreed we should move away from, but I’ve been struck by how many outlets had no problem putting my mugshot on all of their national websites with, you know, 10s of 1000s of viewers, and had no interest in writing about me now. And I mean, I’m not making a big deal of it.
Josh Hoe
I totally understand; a couple of months ago, I got asked for a quote from NPR. I gave them the quote, and their national feed had me as Josh Hoe, sex offender, so I was like, thanks. I’m glad I helped you all out with that; people are calling me from like Georgia. That’s the name I like to go by.
Keri Blakinger
You know this is a situation where I do think the individual reporters make a difference because I’ve written stories in which I’ve had to have a conversation with the editor about, do we need to put in this person’s crime? I really think it’s not germane to this story. Maybe we don’t need it in this one. But traditionally, you would put in their crime for everything, just like you would put in someone’s age if you interview them at a protest.
Josh Hoe
Don’t get me wrong, if the story had been about my offense or something like that, that’s a separate thing. But they were asking for a totally unrelated opinion.
Keri Blakinger
Right. And there’s also situations in which I can imagine a story was not about your particular offense, but it might be germane, you know, but like, when I’m writing about health care, it doesn’t matter what someone’s in there for if you’re not giving them teeth. That is a problem. It doesn’t matter what they’re in there for.
Josh Hoe
So I like to ask people if there are any criminal justice-related books that they like and might recommend to our listeners; do you have any favorite criminal justice-related books that people might enjoy? Aside from your own obviously, which we’re already plugging plenty here.
Keri Blakinger
So um, I feel like this is cheating if I say this because it’s actually a book I haven’t read yet because it’s not out. I am so looking forward to Pam Colloff’s book. I don’t know if she even has a pub date yet. But she’s been working on this for like a year or two. And she’s an amazing writer. So this is based on a story that she did for the New York Times Magazine, about this guy who was wrongfully sent to death row based on jailhouse snitch testimony. And it’s a really crazy case. And there was all this stuff she told me about at the time, that there wasn’t room for in the story. That story was like 10,000 words, but she had done enough reporting to easily write, you know, 100,000. And it’s been so neat to you know, hear about her reporting over the past few years. And I’m so looking forward to this book because she’s an amazing writer. And I also think that she’s done a really difficult thing, of taking something that, you know, could have been just a story about a death penalty case, and actually using it to show something much bigger that’s wrong about the system. And she’s done that in a few different stories like she wrote about someone who was wrongfully convicted based on blood spatter forensics. And now she’s, you know, her latest has been about jailhouse snitch testimony and how sort of fucked up and unreliable it is. And it landed this guy on death row, even though there were clear indications that the person who put him there you know, should have been regarded with some level of suspicion.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I just had Chris Fabricant on earlier who did a whole book on junk science, that was similar, people who’d literally done, you know, been on death row 30 years stuff like that. Later, DNA cleared them.
Keri Blakinger
I noticed his book behind you.
Josh Hoe
There’s unfortunately, way too much of that. So your book is Corrections in Ink. How would you recommend.. is there any particular place you would prefer people find your book?
Keri Blakinger
No, it doesn’t matter. I mean, support your local indie, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter on my end, whichever, whatever method is convenient for you, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Indies. You know, I’ve also been trying to get people to buy copies that will be donated to prisoners. And there’s a link to that on Porch Light that I’ve been tweeting out. It’s hard to navigate to because there’s no good landing page for it. So I’ve just been tweeting it out some.
Josh Hoe
Send me that link. I’ll put it in the show notes.
Keri Blakinger
Yeah, I’ll send that. Also, I think if you go to correctionsininkbook.com. It sends you to a page that has links to a bunch of places you can buy it for yourself, and then also a link to where you can buy it for a prisoner.
Josh Hoe
I always ask the same last question: what did I mess up? What questions should I have asked but did not?
Keri Blakinger
We’ve been talking for like an hour and a half.
Josh Hoe
I know, I know. There doesn’t have to be an answer. I just like to put that out there in case there’s something you wanted to talk about that I didn’t get to.
Keri Blakinger
I’ve been talking about this book for, you know, a couple of weeks now. So, I mean, I’ve gotten to say a lot of things.
Josh Hoe
Well, that’s good. Are you having fun doing the tours, or is it getting old already?
Keri Blakinger
It’s been fun seeing people in some of the different cities. It’s been fun being able to run in different cities and things like that, but a lot of places I went on tour were also places that I knew a lot of people and would have an audience. And that means that those are places where I spent time and often lived some of the really dark parts of my book, you know. So that’s been, that’s a lot to take in, you know. So it’s been a sort of, you know, an interesting book tour through my own past.
Josh Hoe
I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time. It’s good to see you face to face. And hopefully, I honestly can’t believe we haven’t run into each other across the country at different things over all this time.
Keri Blakinger
I know! Well, I mean, there haven’t been things.
Josh Hoe
We did have the COVID thing.
Well, thanks so much, and I hope you have a great night.
Keri Blakinger
Cool, good talking to you.
Josh Hoe
And now my take.
Sometimes when I get down or depressed about how much regression we seem to be facing right now, I try to remind myself about how many amazing people, often people with very different approaches and strategies for ensuring progressive reform, exist in this movement. I’m so glad that sisters like Keri exist and fight every single day through her journalism. If you haven’t followed her work, it is amazing and tireless, and passionate. And she has been incredibly successful. It’s so brave that Keri puts herself entirely out there like she does and just refuses to step back or let people’s criticism stop her, even for one second. She just keeps getting up, sending in more Freedom of Information Act requests, and keeps trying to bring attention to a prison system that is beyond barbaric. I hope everyone will take a few good hours and read her book; it’s well worth your time.
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